This Kerry Thing

I've got to say something about this Kerry situation. It is just so perfect.

Kerry screwed up.

He was supposed to say:

"Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush."

Instead he said:

"Education, you know, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Well, the guy doesn't have a career in stand-up, that part's clear.

The President went out campaigning and demanded that Kerry apologize to our troops. Oh, the uproar!

But look, this whole situation is a microcosm. It's a perfect laboratory example of the kind of insanity we have been dealing with here in Montgomery County and all across the country.

Nobody in their right mind believes that Kerry was saying that the troops in Iraq are a bunch of undereducated losers. Nobody really believes that.

But the way things are, this is as good as reality. He slipped up, he screwed up his "joke," and the nuts jumped on it as if he'd really said something outrageous.

We have seen this again and again in our controversy. The ... other side ... takes some innocuous phrase in a curriculum document, and makes it out that the schools are teaching oral sex in fifth grade, or they're promoting homosexuality, or they're trying to tell students that it's all right to be promiscuous. We have heard so much of that stuff.

And it's the same thing: misconstrual. Everybody knows Kerry wasn't badmouthing the troops. I can state for a fact that anybody who honestly believes he was criticizing the soldiers in Iraq is an idiot. Certified. Factory-built. Dyed-in-the-wool. Idiot.

But that doesn't mean they can't go to the newspapers with it.

The historic theme of our day is the disintegration of reality. Illusion has replaced perception. Wishing has replaced thinking, as wishes have replaced facts. Faith has replaced knowledge. Fear has replaced reason. Pretending has replaced believing.

It doesn't matter what Kerry said or what he meant. It really doesn't matter to the President, to John McCain, or Ken Mehlman, or any of the others who have treated this as something it's not. The reality of the situation is irrelevant.

What matters is that Kerry said something that could easily be taken out of context, easily twisted into an ugly sound-bite, and used against him. Did you see the apparently genuine expression of outrage on President Bush's face yesterday, in his campaign speech, as he told his worshipful audience what Kerry had said?

Keith Olbermann hit it on the head. It's one of three things. Maybe Bush is so stupid that he doesn't understand that it was him that Kerry was insulting; maybe he is so cynical that he decided to pretend that Kerry had actually attacked the troops; and maybe he has conflated the two, and presumes that a personal attack on him is the same thing as attacking the troops. (Read the full transcript, it's very good.)

Yes, this situation is a perfect summary of the sad state of America today.